


Unlikely Existence

by Linpatootie



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (just getting that one out of the way first), Carlos POV, Carlos is so done, Fluff, M/M, Mpreg, beware of crap pseudo-science in the name of fiction, just so very very done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linpatootie/pseuds/Linpatootie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil is pregnant. Carlos seems to be the only one who thinks this is weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose this takes place in the same fictional universe as my previous Night Vale fic, hence the... Cecil headcanons. [Go read that one if you’re interested in the how and why of the teeth and the eyes and the tats](http://archiveofourown.org/works/965705/chapters/1894467).
> 
> Please note I am not a scientist. I'm pulling all the science-y stuff out of my butt here, so don't come yelling at me if it makes no sense.
> 
> Thank you Tazigo for the betaread :)

Normal becomes a relative term in Night Vale. Normal means nothing when time refuses to remain linear, when a five-headed dragon is now genuinely running for mayor, or when your boyfriend insists on taking the nest of scorpions from his bathroom with him when you move in together into your new duplex in Old Town. Normal redefines itself, no longer referring to something lacking observable abnormalities or deficiencies, but rather simply what you can get used to.

It’s normal to be greeted by their mildly see-through neighbor Pat in the morning. It’s normal to fall asleep with the searchlights of the Secret Police’s helicopter sweeping across the bedroom window as they do their nightly round of the city.

And then it’s not normal to have Cecil burst into the kitchen on a perfectly sunny Saturday morning, brandishing a plastic stick and cheerfully exclaiming that he’s pregnant.

Carlos raises his eyebrows at him over the morning paper, which he’s trying to read before it self-combusts, and isn’t too fussed just yet. Cecil has come out with odder things, after all. 

“When you say pregnant... do you mean meaningful? Like a pregnant pause?”

“No, I mean, like, with child. I’m pregnant.” He smiles widely, waving the plastic thing like a magic wand that might conceivably conjure a baby out of the microwave. It hits Carlos that, good grief, that’s actually a Predictor. Cecil took a _pregnancy test_. 

Still, not panicking. Not yet. Not even Night Vale could cause a biological male to conceive a child. Cecil is not, after all, a seahorse.

Carlos knows that for sure. He snuck some saliva a few months back and ran some standard DNA tests. A man has to do what a man has to do when his boyfriend has glow-in the-dark eyes and teeth like a shark, you see. 

“You’re a man. You have a penis. I’ve been very close to your penis, it’s... normal.”  
“Thank you? I’m still pregnant, though.” 

Okay. Time for Carlos to put down the paper, and fold it neatly. He takes a deep breath. “Why do you believe you’re pregnant?”  
“I took a test? Peed on a stick. It got a little pink thingy in the middle.” Cecil sits down across from him, pushing the Predictor at him over the kitchen table. There’s a little pink thingy on there, yes, and Carlos has so many questions he is for just a moment stumped as to where to start. 

“Cecil... why did you feel inclined to take a pregnancy test?”  
“I gained over three pounds in two weeks, I’m constantly hungry, and old woman Josie told me I should take one. She said I was glowing.”

He actually was glowing, Carlos had to give him that. Cecil had looked positively radiant the past couple weeks, in a way that had nothing to do with Radon Canyon, but which he knew could have nothing to do with pregnancy, either. He’d assumed Cecil was just happy, their little house coming together nicely, their relationship going so well. 

“Are you suggesting I got you pregnant via anal intercourse? You do realize that’s not how pregnancy works? Even if you’d, ah, been in the possession of a uterus.”  
Cecil makes a face at ‘anal intercourse’. Okay, that might not have been the most romantic descriptor, but it was damn well correct.

“I know how pregnancy works, Carlos. I know I’m male, and probably should not be able to conceive. But I also know there’s no such thing as mountains, yet you keep insisting those are real. How is this different? Maybe sometimes things that are difficult to believe can exist, after all.” 

Carlos closes his eyes, and tells himself not to get drawn into the mountains debate again. Not now. Not when Cecil was sitting there, utterly convinced he was carrying a child. _Carlos’_ child.

“Look, I’ll just go see a gynecologist, what’s the harm?” Cecil said.  
“Gynecologist. Operative word, ‘gyne’, meaning ‘woman’ . You’re a _man_. You’re not pregnant. The Predictor thing just misfired because a _man_ peed on it. Cecil. I love you, but this... you’re _not_ pregnant. I’m sorry.”

Cecil observes him for a quiet, disappointed moment, while the newspaper discreetly combusts and burns into an apologetic pile of ashes between them. Carlos isn’t sure what Cecil had expected of him, but this, apparently, had not been it. He rewinds his own words inside his head, replays, wonders where he went wrong.

“This is my _body_ , Carlos,” Cecil says. “I can feel it. Something’s changed. Is it really so hard to believe?”  
“Yes,” Carlos answers, perhaps too quickly, perhaps too rashly. 

Cecil winces at the finality in his tone. “Fine. I’ll go see a doctor on my own. Whatever. It’s not like it matters. It’s just your baby.” 

And with that Cecil gets up and turns out of their newly painted kitchen. Carlos hears him grab his jacket, his car keys, and slam the door behind him. He feels instantly miserable, but not for reasons he thinks he should be.

***

It all becomes very real when Cecil charges into his lab the Tuesday after and slams a piece of paper onto his aluminum workbench. 

“There. Doctor’s note. Confirmed. I’m nine weeks pregnant.” 

The past three days had been icy at best. Cecil didn’t make him sleep on the couch, but only just barely. He’d thrown up the morning before, and when Carlos offered him a glass of water he declined, saying he wouldn’t need a drink of water for fake morning-sickness, now would he. _That_ had stung, but Carlos had kept his ground.

Cecil wasn’t pregnant. He just couldn’t be. Except now he was looking at test results of a hospital pregnancy test, stating that a high level of HCG had been detected in Cecil’s urine, indicating he should, indeed, be pregnant. 

“This is not possible. They must have mixed up the results,” he says, picking up the paper and reading the results again.

“They ran the tests twice. I’m scheduled for an ultrasound next week.” Cecil’s voice is pinched, and when Carlos looks up at him he looks like he’s about to explode with something or other. Might be anger. Might be nausea. Might be both, actually, and Carlos wonders if he should fetch a bucket.

“If you want to, you can come with. Get visual evidence,” Cecil continues, spitting out the word ‘visual’ so fiercely little flecks of saliva fly from his lips. 

Carlos puts the paper down, smoothes it with two hands he tells himself are not trembling. “Cecil. You’re male. I’m male. How. How is this. Why is this. How?” Ah yes, scientist Carlos, asking the hard-hitting questions. He could just about punch himself in the nose for that. 

“I don’t know, Carlos! You’re the scientist, _you_ work it out! All I know is, I’m having _your_ baby, and you keep on insisting it’s not really happening! Well whooptidoo, guess I’ll just go deal with this on my own!”  
“Cecil...” 

But Cecil is already turning, ready to stomp out, _again_ , and that just won’t do. Not when it appears Cecil genuinely is being hormonal, and Carlos fears he might genuinely be acting like an ass, and damn it all to hell they were just doing so well, the two of them. _Whooptidoo_.

“Cecil, stop that, don’t walk away. Just give me a moment. Please.”  
Cecil stops but doesn’t turn, his hands balled into fists by his side. “ _You_ need a moment? You do realize _I’m_ the one who’s knocked up, right?”  
“Right. Sorry. I don’t mean to say... sorry.” 

He rubs his eyes with both hands, and tries to think of what to say. What to do. What to _think_ , actually, and comes up so short it’s ridiculous. A headache begins to tease at the back of his skull.

“Is it okay if I go see your doctor?” he asks.  
That makes Cecil turn around. “What for?”  
“I don’t know. I need to make sense of this.”

Cecil ponders this, looking like he’s trying to figure out whether to be scandalized or amused, and comes out with a response that manages to combine both. “Whatever. If it’ll help you.” 

Carlos thinks it might. A talk with another man of science, and all that. He hopes, perhaps, that someone else telling him this will help him wrap his head around it.

He should have known better, of course.

“But he’s a _man_ ,” he says a few hours later, as he is sitting in the office of Cecil’s brand new gynecologist. He’s been anticipating his visit, apparently. They’d put up wagers, about how long it’d take him to show up demanding an explanation. 

To be fair Carlos didn’t ‘demand’ anything. He walked in and politely yet firmly asked to speak with the doctor who confirmed Cecil Palmer’s pregnancy. One of the nurses went to fetch him, and skipped off mumbling something about owing the Peds intern 5 bucks.

“It’s not unheard of in our town,” Cecil’s doctor, Dr. Jarmouni, chortles from across his desk. “I had a male birth in the clinic just last August. His wife was very surprised, let me tell you.”

“Oh, can’t imagine why she would be,” Carlos said weakly. “The child, was it genetically hers?”  
“Of course it was, why wouldn’t it be? They’re happily married.”  
“How could a woman possibly get a man pregnant?”

“We at Night Vale General Hospital find, sir, that certain questions are best left unasked.” The doctor smiles the happy, knowing smile of men well past their middle age, who’d seen it all and stopped giving a fuck about three decades ago. Carlos isn’t there yet. Carlos hopes he’ll never get there. He’d be a shit scientist if he stopped asking questions, after all.

“It’s a terrible ordeal, of course, male births are. Not to worry, we’ll look closely after your husband, but it’ll be a rough experience. The male body is just not designed for this.”  
“We’re not married,” Carlos hears himself say, but he’s focused entirely on something else. Saying the male body is not designed for this is one of the more frightening understatements he’s heard in his life. 

The doctor looks disapproving because, of course, having a baby out of wedlock is a great concern when you’re both men and this wasn’t supposed to be an issue ever. The doctor’s office starts leaning subtly to the left, and Carlos wonders if he’s going to faint. That would be a cliché right out of a movie, really, and he hopes he won’t actually go for it.

“How is Cecil going to give birth?” he asks, frowning at the room.

“Well, he can’t, obviously. Without a birth canal or even a vagina, that’ll be a touch tricky!” The doctor actually chuckles at that, like it’s _funny_. At the look on Carlos’ face he falters, though, and attempts to turn his laugh into an odd, uneven cough. “Caesarian section is how we usually deliver the babies. Minimal, minimal risk to the, ah, father.”

“C-section,” Carlos says. “You’re going to cut it out of him.”  
“Crudely put, but yes.”  
“Christ.”  
“Now now, Mr. Palmer, babies are delivered with C-sections every day, regardless of the gender of their mothers. Fathers. Whatever. There’s no need to fret.”

“Still not married,” Carlos says feebly. “My name’s not Palmer. And I’m sorry, but I think there’s a lot of need to fret. Excuse me. I need to. Go panic for a while.”

He stumbles up from his chair, nods a trembling goodbye, and manages not to vomit until he’s outside Night Vale General Hospital. That’s where he pukes neatly into a rosebush planted beside the entrance, and stands there dry heaving and listening to his own heartbeat for a few minutes. 

Pregnant. Cecil is actually pregnant. Carlos reels with so many things all at once it feels like he’s sitting inside some kind of carousel, where the horses are not delicately crafted wooden statues but are real-live animals, frothing at the mouth and screaming loudly. 

It’s scientifically impossible, and far too much to explain for just one optimistic scientist by himself in this bizarre desert town. It makes absolutely no biological sense, it’s utterly improbable, and on top of _all that_ , if he peels away the layers of disbelief and insanity, if he can for just a minute make himself not focus on how very much this cannot be happening...

... Cecil is going to have a baby. _His_ baby. They were going to be _fathers_.

Oh, dear lord. 

He drives home too fast, parks his car like a buffalo who only got his driver’s license a week ago, and rushes to the front door. He drops the keys twice, all but falls across the threshold, flounders down the hallway and erupts into their living room in a flurry of raised hands and apologies. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t believe you. I’m a dick. I’m so sorry.”

Cecil stands in the living room, on his bare feet, holding a box of what appear to be his CDs, and for a moment Carlos thinks he is looking so gorgeous, and how he loves him so impossibly much even if Cecil gets him into the weirdest situations.

Then Cecil drops the box, probably breaking a few CDs in the process, and is in his arms before Carlos even realized he’s leapt over the box. 

“Thank God! I thought even the doctor wouldn’t be able to convince you! I know it’s a lot to take in, I know it is, but this is happening!” Cecil says into his hair, and Carlos has no words for this situation so he doesn’t answer and just clings to him and thinks a blissful nothing for a few minutes. 

“Are you okay?” Cecil asks, hesitating around Carlos’ silence, and Carlos barks out a laugh that veers dangerously close to manic.

“No. God no. I’m not okay. I threw up on a bunch of roses by the hospital. I nearly ran over Mrs. Valster’s pet alligator that nobody will ever be able to convince me is a dog. I’m freaking out, is what I’m doing, and I’m no good at it. But I’m also really sorry for, for saying the stupid things I did. I should have believed you. I should have at least given you the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry.”

Cecil’s arms tighten around him in a way Carlos can only describe as wary, and he runs a concerned hand through Carlos’ hair. “Would you like a glass of water?” he tries.  
“No, I don’t want a glass of water.” Carlos breathes, inhaling through the fabric of Cecil’s shirt which he’s pressed his face firmly into. “Let’s just sit.” 

They do, on their brand new couch, in a living room that still smells of paint. Cecil looks hopeful. Carlos feels small and young and in over his head.

“I don’t understand how this happened,” he says.  
“Neither do I, but I don’t think it’s that relevant. It did happen. The how and the why... whatever.” Cecil shrugs. Whatever. Of course. “But I get that those are important to you. That’s what you do. You figure out things nobody gets. So, it could be an opportunity, for you? To study. I’d let you.”

“You’re my boyfriend, not my test subject,” Carlos says, and surprises himself with how whiny the words come out.  
“Semantics.”

“No, not... Cecil. Okay. Maybe. A few simple... non-invasive, harmless tests... what am I even saying? Let’s just, let’s just set all that aside for a moment. Don’t look so shocked, I’m dealing with a lot of things all at once. Cecil. Are we really going to have a baby?”  
“Several medical tests seem to conclude that yes, we are.” Cecil smiles an uneven, careful smile. 

“A baby. A living little human being.”  
“I certainly hope so.”  
Oh God, Carlos hadn’t even factored in the possibility of it being something else yet. He really doesn’t have the mental capacity at the moment to worry about that one, too. 

“A person that we’ll be responsible for for the next eighteen years.”  
“Probably longer.”

Carlos goes quiet again. He stares at their coffee table, Cecil’s coffee table that he’d taken with him from his colorful little apartment. It was a heavy thing, all wood of indefinable origin, that they’d had a hell of a time logging from the moving van into the house. It wasn’t even pretty, not necessarily, and Carlos wasn’t entirely sure the dark stains and deep grooves exactly in the middle were that trustworthy, but Cecil said it had character and that Carlos had to agree with.

“Cecil. Are we really there, yet?” he asks quietly.  
“What do you mean?”  
“We’ve not even been together a whole year. We’re still unpacking. How are we going to raise a child?”  
Cecil’s turn to go quiet. “I hadn’t thought of it like that yet,” he says.

“Raising a family is a lot of responsibility,” Carlos adds. His mind supplies him with images now, like clear-cut Technicolor commercials, full of diapers and broken nights. A slide show, showing him minivans, safety rails, spit-up on expensive shirts. But, image by image, the picture changes, like the sun dropping into the living room after a rainy morning.

There’s not just safety rails but there’s safety wheels, on a little red bicycle, and chubby little fingers holding thick Crayola crayons over colored paper. Little shoes, kicked out by the front door, little hand prints on the windows. 

It’s like getting hit in the face with a frying pan made of happy stereotypes. Carlos sees birthday cakes and Christmas trees. Band-Aids on scraped knees, a swing set squeaking in their tiny backyard, little arms wrapped tightly around his neck and sticky kisses on his cheeks.

He knows this is Night Vale. He knows the birthday cake might not be edible, the Christmas tree might be full of tarantulas, and the swing set might be the worst idea anyone has ever had.

But he sees a child with dark curly hair, the moon in its eyes, and a smile with too many teeth in it, and it tugs his heart a little to the right and his stomach a little to the left. He’s not sure of this, he’s not really sure of _anything_ right now, but he’s certainly having a moment. 

“It’s not too late to put a stop to it,” Cecil says, and the whole stupidly idyllic daydream screeches to a halt.  
“What?”  
“Abortion. I could... I could still.” 

Carlos gets lost in the specifics of that for a moment. How would they perform an abortion on a man? But then he’s pulled back into this reality, where this is _his Cecil_ , who’s pregnant with _his baby_ , and is now talking about removing it. Because Carlos is, once again, a giant ass who expressed doubts about this being what he wants.

He feels something he’s never felt before. It’s strong, and it’s primal, and it’s coming from a place within himself he didn’t know existed. An urge to protect, and to cherish, an urge to mortally wound everyone and everything that will threaten this new life spawning between the two of them. That clump of cells will have its chance to ride that little red bicycle, so help him God.

He puts a hand on Cecil’s very flat underbelly and shakes his head. Cecil catches his eye and slowly, very slowly, he smiles. 

It’s not even a whole week later when they’re both back in the doctor’s office, looking at a blurry grayscale blob on a worryingly old monitor. It’s got a heartbeat. It’s already got little arms, and little legs, and sits quiet and alive in a gestational sac that’s miraculously appeared in Cecil’s abdominal cavity. 

“That’s our baby,” Cecil says quietly, in awe.  
“Yes,” Carlos answers. 

He’s never been so terrified and so exhilarated in his life.


	2. Chapter 2

Carlos creates a new folder on his laptop. The Pregnancy File. He’s plotting graphs, piles of data, test results, pictures, anything he can manage to collect. Cecil has given him the green light and there is so much to do, so much to figure out and to learn, that he goes rather giddy with it.

Nothing intrusive, of course. Certainly nothing dangerous. Just a few blood tests, perhaps, keeping track of the growth of both the infant and Cecil, recording the changes Cecil’s body is bound to go through... he could probably talk Doctor Jarmouni into a couple extra ultrasounds, too. 

Of course, amniocentesis would be amazing, but to be fair he’d understand if Cecil were to balk at getting jabbed in the tummy with a giant hollow needle. Best save asking him he how felt about that one for a little later. 

One afternoon, after he’s pricked Cecil on the middle finger with a lancet to obtain a few drops of blood, Cecil watches as Carlos lovingly puts a band-aid on the quietly bleeding digit and asks him if he’s going to publish an article on this.

“No,” Carlos answers without having to think about it. “If this had been anyone else, I probably would have, but not when the test subject is you. Not when it’s our baby. This is just for me. If I’m going to put a child into this world, I am damn sure going to understand where it came from.” 

Time passes quickly like this. Carlos gathers data like a madman. Cecil talks about what color the nursery should be, and stresses himself out wondering if he should play music for the baby and whether it would enjoy hip-hop or be more of a smooth jazz person. 

As such, a week is nothing. Mondays are always repetitive. Tuesdays are but a bridge. Wednesdays remain ever an figment of your imagination, where Thursdays are cautiously optimistic and Fridays rush past in a flurry of anticipation. Weekends are an illusion, so strongly desired yet so meaningless, and then the whole dance starts over again and a month rushes past before he’s even stopped to think about such obvious things as baby names.

Cecil is now fourteen weeks pregnant. They see the doctor more than a pregnant person normally would and all is well, and Carlos is learning to deal with the constant worry that the weird biological impossibility of a man carrying a baby in his belly will cause the entire universe to stop listening to the laws of physics and fold in on itself.

Cecil, meanwhile, stands in front of the full-length mirror in their bedroom, wearing only his pajama pants, looking at his silhouette and contemplatively running a hand over his abdomen. His tattoos ripple affectionately, following his fingers, curling elegantly around his belly button and back, but Cecil pays them no mind. 

“I can’t tell if I’m starting to show, or if I just ate too much,” he says. 

Carlos, watching him from the doorway, was just brushing his teeth. He makes an non-committal noise around his toothbrush, pads back to the bathroom, and rinses his mouth with cold water. He remembers to say good night to the scorpions before turning off the lights (they get so offended when he forgets, after all) and returns to Cecil. 

He stands behind him, several inches shorter, and places his hands on Cecil’s belly. His skin is warm and smooth, the hair trailing from his belly button down into his groin tickling the tips of Carlos’ fingers.  
“Hard to tell. You did eat a lot today. But, really, at this stage, you should be starting to show.”

Cecil hums in agreement and covers Carlos’ hands with his own and they stand, a little overwhelmed, a little lost in thought, looking at their reflections.

“I’m scared,” Cecil throws out then, and Carlos frowns at him in the mirror. Cecil sighs, moves, and flops down onto their bed.

“I’ll confess I was at first simply blinded by my own enthusiasm. The idea of starting a family with you. The notion that the universe was giving us this little gift. But now I can’t stop thinking about how horrible life is and how selfish I am for giving it to an innocent child.” 

Okay. One of _those_ moods. Carlos isn’t sure he’s properly prepared for this. He crawls onto the bed next to Cecil, wraps an arm around him, presses a kiss to his ear. “Life isn’t that horrible, is it? I mean. This is pretty nice, right now. You. Me.”

“You didn’t listen to my show today, did you?” Cecil says so miserably Carlos is almost scared to admit that no, he actually hadn’t. He’d gotten distracted running a few tests on the hormone levels in the blood sample Cecil had lovingly supplied him with, and hadn’t remembered to turn on his radio until the show had already ended.

“Three people were swallowed by the Home Depot off Oxford. Literally. A mouth-like orifice opened up in the hardwood section and ate them. The secret police closed off the store until they can find an otolaryngologist able to deal with this.”

“An otolaryngologist.” For a mouth that appeared in a building. Of course. Carlos doesn’t immediately grasp why this is causing Cecil’s current concerns, though, as he’s had items a lot worse on his show. 

“We live in a world where people get eaten by buildings and I’m putting a child into it! I’m selfish, so selfish.” Cecil grimaces and stares up at the ceiling with large, round eyes, and Carlos grapples for a way to fix this.

He doesn’t necessarily disagree, which makes it harder. He loves Night Vale, he really does, but he too has his moments where he wonders if putting a kid into it is the brightest idea. Still. They live here. They even _like_ it here, despite the obvious hazards, so this is going to happen and Carlos supposes he’ll just have to buy the kid a mace and possibly a Colt for Christmas. 

“Well,” he tries. “Okay. Yes. True. Maybe we live in a world where helicopters occasionally snatch children which I’m starting to think show up as zombie messengers for the council along the line, and the accidental death by rabid monkey bites may be a little higher for Night Vale than they ought to be for any town in Arizona, but Cecil. Life is. Life is hard. People die. But that’s no reason not to be born?”

Cecil looks at him warily. He’s perfected that look, the ‘I’m not sure if I like where you’re going but I’m giving you room to blather on anyway’, that Carlos can’t seem to decide whether he should be offended by. Still.

“I mean. There’s lots to live for. Like, perfect orange desert sunsets. White chocolate mochaccinos. Opening a new jar of peanut butter. And this, this!” He gestures at the two of them. “Cecil, just think. Fifteen, sixteen years from now... our kid will fall in love. Can you imagine? That’s. That’s what you’re giving him. Her. The possibility of doing that.”

It takes him a moment, but slowly Cecil smiles. “That’s beautiful, Carlos. Maybe not necessarily helpful, but beautiful. You’re right, I’m being too dramatic. Maybe it’s hormones.”

Carlos doesn’t think it’s hormones, as Cecil is prone to the occasional existential crisis, but doesn’t mention it. 

“Do you seriously live to open jars of peanut butter, though?”  
“Oh, shut up. I was trying to help.”

Cecil turns and snorts a perfect laugh into his hair.

***

Cecil insists on green for the nursery, for luck and prosperity and to ward off the spiderwolves. Carlos insists it’s still too early to start painting the spare bedroom they’d decided would become a nursery at all, but Cecil braves the newly reopened Home Depot to buy paint and gives Carlos a terrific stink-eye for an hour or so. 

Carlos leaves him to it. He holes himself up in the bedroom, tapping some notes onto his laptop, and wonders if their house will ever not smell like paint. 

He stops typing when he hears Cecil curse, loudly and insistently. He trots to the nursery-to-be and finds him brandishing a dripping paintbrush at the freshly painted wall, where blue liquid is stubbornly oozing from the wall. It smells like blood, coppery and heavy, and drips down in thick globs like grape jelly.

"I just painted that wall! Come _on_!" Cecil exclaims. He throws the paintbrush down onto the newspaper-covered floor, spattering lime green everywhere, and reaches for a cloth rag to dab at the sticky stuff.

"Hold it!" Carlos says. Cecil stops short, giving him an odd look, and Carlos pulls an empty test tube out the inside pocket of his practically ever-present lab coat and catches some of the liquid. Just in case. You never know.

Cecil waits for him to finish, then starts wiping the blue stuff off as best as he can manage. There's a smudge of green across his cheek, presumably from pushing his glasses up his nose with a paint-covered hand."I wonder if this is the universe telling us we should have gone with blue, for the walls," he says with a sigh.

"I like the green. It's cheerful. And gender-neutral."

"I'm all for allowing our child to be whatever it chooses to be, but I hardly think that the color of his or her nursery walls will be of much influence." Cecil sighs again, straightening, and begins repainting the now smudgy section of wall. "My father insisted on pink walls for me, and look how I turned out."

Carlos doesn't know how to respond to that in a way that won't be mildly offensive, so he says nothing and just stands there, loving Cecil from a small distance.

“What do you think it’s going to be, though?” Cecil asks, frowning in concentration as he paints. “The sex of the baby, I mean.”

“Well,” Carlos says. “I was thinking about that a few days back. Scientists in England figured out a way of getting a woman pregnant without requiring male genetic material. Thing is, this female-only input for the child’s DNA means they can only birth female children. What if it now turns out a pregnancy with input from only two males would result in exclusively male offspring? The theory doesn’t really hold up genetics-wise, but what we’re doing here is pretty much unprecedented as it is so we’re gonna have to wait and find out whether this is going to be of any influence on the infant's sex, I suppose.”

“I was sort of hoping for a hunch, not a full scientific theory,” Cecil says, but he’s grinning at Carlos over his shoulder. “But to be fair, my gut feeling says boy, too. Don’t know why. It’s not like it really matters.”  
“It matters a little. I mean, not a lot, but a little bit.”

“Imagine a boy, though. I can see us now, playing catch out in the scrublands.”  
Carlos snorts out a laugh. “Cecil. Have you ever played catch?”  
“Well. No. But I can learn?” 

Carlos leans against the doorpost, watching as Cecil continues to paint. He’s painted all but one remaining wall, which is impressive progress for one afternoon. It’s not a big room, though, by any means, but the light in there is nice and the shade of green is, actually, quite optimistic. He can see a baby in there, surrounded by some nice, dependable Swedish furniture. 

“How are you at catch, anyway?” Cecil asks, and Carlos makes an unhappy noise in the back of his throat.  
“Yeah, you know those kids in gym class, who wince and hide when the ball comes their way? That would be me.” 

Cecil laughs, the sound of it bouncing around the empty room. Carlos sometimes wishes he could bottle it, keep it in his pocket, cherish it like a little baby chick.

“We’ll just hope that whatever gender our baby’s going to grow up to be, it won’t be the sporty type, then. Easier for everyone involved. Ooh, maybe he’ll be a boy scout! I dated a scout master once, did I ever tell you?”  
“Good lord.”

“He was violently dragged into an alternate reality by a mute creepy mob of his own scouts.”  
“Good _lord_.”

“Well. Still. Can’t wait until we find out the baby’s sex for sure.” Cecil finishes the wall, again, and neatly places his brush on a painting tray. “Okay. If the blue stuff comes back I’m going to pitch a fit and cry.”

“Let’s hope it won’t.” Carlos holds the test tube up to his face, where the blue liquid seems to be expanding and contracting, like it’s breathing peacefully within the glass. “Also, I vote we put the crib in the center of the room. Away from the, uh, walls.”  
Cecil agrees. 

***

At fifteen weeks Carlos bites the bullet and e-mails his parents. They e-mail him back a bunch of questions regarding the birth mother, so he doesn’t think they necessarily understood the point he was trying to make. 

He ignores the e-mail for the time being, trying to work out how he’s going to break this to them, but he thinks it might involve having to send them a picture of Cecil’s now definitely expanding abdomen.

***

Sixteen weeks, or as Carlos calculated himself based on their sexual activity and the hormone levels in Cecil’s blood, one hundred and ten days, and they are in the hospital, waiting for the ultrasound technician together. The ultrasound machine is sitting there, untouched, and Carlos already fiddled with it twice. Cecil is starting to lose his patience with him.

It’s their second ultrasound, and Carlos is nervous. He is intensely nervous. The last one, at ten weeks, had shown them a living thing shaped like a little kidney bean. Their little kidney bean, yes, but a kidney bean regardless.

Now, Carlos knew, it would be starting to turn into a little person. A little person, with little toes, and little fingers, and even tiny little fingerprints. It should, for all intents and purposes, be recognizable as a potential human.

It _should_ be.

Because it might, also, not. This is Night Vale. This is a man, carrying a life Carlos still doesn’t know how to explain came to be. It _might_ be human. It _might_ also be a Velociraptor. 

And the most terrifying thing about that idea, the deceptively simple truth that truly kept Carlos awake until four AM the night before, is that he knows that he would love that Velociraptor more than he’s ever loved anything in his life. 

So he’s not at peace with the universe over that, because that’s just a lot to deal with, and he fiddles with the ultrasound machine some more. Cecil threatens him a little until the door to the examination room opens and the ultrasound tech comes in. A young woman, with six fingers on her left hand and a smile that could end wars.

“Well, good morning! If it isn’t Cecil and his scientist. You two are the talk of the maternity ward, let me tell you.” 

Carlos doesn’t doubt that. Cecil doesn’t care. He launches into an enthusiastic tirade about how he’s gaining so much weight and how he can’t wear his skinny jeans anymore, and the tech effortlessly hikes up his shirt and squirts the clear, viscous jelly to his abdomen.

Cecil’s belly is starting to be, Carlos has to admit, rather glorious. It’s odd–looking, of course, because it’s still such an obviously male belly with body hair sprinkled down it, but he’s getting all-over soft and round. His tattoos seem entirely enamored with the changes Cecil’s body is going through and curl in perfect spirals around the aspiring bump. 

“Let’s see if we can find the little one, yes?” the tech says. One of her eyes has no pupil, Carlos notices. It’s more jarring than the eleventh finger. She flicks the machine on, places the probe on Cecil’s belly and slides it around.

A perfect, steady heartbeat reverberates out the machine and around the room. The tech cheerfully relays how baby’s heartbeat is sounding good, but Carlos is too focused on the screen.

“Will you be able to detect any abnormalities? Deformities, any signs there might be something...” He almost said wrong. He swallows the word, and tries again. “Something exceptional?”

The tech smiles, but it’s no longer the kind of smile that could end wars. It’s the kind of smile that might start one, rather. “Well. It’s too early for a few things, but certain birth defects can... but there’s no reason to believe anything will be off.”

“Carlos?” Cecil says, and his voice is so hesitant it rips Carlos’ attention away from the monitor. “Do you think there might be something wrong?”  
“Not _wrong_. Just. Different. Not something that might incite immediate concern.”

“Different. Would that be a problem for you?”  
Carlos lives in a town where he’s not allowed to eat bread, is in love with a man whose tattoos are now attempting to catch the ultrasound probe, and has fully embraced that very man’s pregnant state. “I live for different,” he says. “You know that. I just want to know whether it’ll be... okay.”

“Can’t you just have faith that it will be?”  
“I’m a scientist. I don’t do so well with blind faith.”

"There it is!” the tech exclaims then. Carlos whips his head back to the monitor, and yes, there it is. Definitely not a kidney bean anymore. Also definitely not a Velociraptor. 

Cecil makes a happy noise, one Carlos can’t match but which he can certainly feel, pulsing in his veins and skipping through his heart. He drinks in the perfect shape of the baby’s perfect head, the perfect curve of its perfect nose, and watches as it raises its little hands and spreads its little fingers as if to show them off.

“Just ten fingers, that's a shame. A perfect little spine, though. I'd say he's human enough, right, daddies?" the tech says, that great smile back on her face. "And oh! Won’t you look at that. You guys wanna know the sex?"

“Yes,” Carlos blurts. “I mean. Yes. Right?”  
“Yes, of course, please,” Cecil adds eagerly. 

She gives them an honest-to-God giggle. “Well, congratulations. You’re having a boy.” She clicks a button on the machine and it starts to print them a picture, to take home.

“A boy! Just like we thought! Carlos, you said we would!” Cecil says excitedly, sitting up and flailing his hands as the tech wipes the gel off his skin with a paper towel. “A boy! Oh, Carlos!” 

Carlos just stares at the little face in pixilated black and white, the little fingers spread out into a perfectly unintentional hello, and instantly embraces a world where he’s having a son.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no fucking clue what lawrencium is so if Google lied to me go yell at them

Cecil lies naked across their bed, fingers splayed on his swollen belly. He’s happy, soft around the edges, sated from a far-too-careful bit of sex they’d had earlier. Carlos had made Cecil straddle him, ride him slowly, but had remained a touch worried.

“Are you sure this okay?” he’d asked.  
“Carlos, as the ultrasound today confirmed, the baby is not actually up my butt. Now can we please not have this conversation while you’re fucking me?” 

Carlos had been mildly impressed with Cecil’s achievement to get two whole sentences out, sub-clauses and all, right in the middle of intercourse. The sex had been slow, and unbelievably intimate, and even now as Carlos is brushing his teeth he keeps walking back and forth from the bathroom to the bedroom, just to marvel at Cecil as he lies beautiful and lost in thought in the yellow light of their bedside lamp.

“How do you feel about Jeffrey?” Cecil calls out.  
“I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve met him?” Carlos says, crawling into bed. He worries the sheets out from underneath Cecil’s naked form, watches as his tattoos scatter indignantly, and pulls Cecil close. 

Outside the window something chirps, but the sound is too mechanical for it to be a cricket. A monitoring device, maybe, crawling up the side of the house to sit on the roof and survey the neighborhood for a while. Carlos would go out and investigate, but Cecil is still naked and warm and pliant against him.

“I mean as a name for the baby, you dork,” Cecil laughs.  
“Oh. Uh. No. No offense, but... no.”

“Fair enough. So what sort of names do you like?”  
“I have genuinely no idea.” 

Carlos is not a creative man. When he tries to think of a name he likes, the only one that springs to mind is ‘Cecil’, and he knows that his brain only supplies that one because that’s the name of the very best person he’s ever met. That’s how his mind associates things, and that’s why he’s useless at coming up with a name by himself. 

“Carlos Junior,” Cecil supplies unhelpfully.  
“Oh God, please don’t.”  
“Okay. Albert?”

“Albert.”  
“Like Albert Einstein.”

Carlos laughs now, splaying his hand across Cecil’s belly. Cecil’s tattoos rush to him like affectionate puppies. “Naming him after a famous scientist? Cute. But naw.”

“This is going to be hard though, naming him. He’ll be stuck with it his entire life.” Cecil worries his way under the sheets, and all but sticks himself into Carlos’ armpit. Carlos refuses to move his hand off Cecil’s belly, and thinks that might become something of a thing for him the coming months. The belly, he’s learning, is amazing and beautiful and demands to be touched. 

“We still have time, we’ll find the right name. Just promise me no C-names?”  
“No C-names?”  
“No. I mean, we have Cecil, we have Carlos. Please let’s not make that a theme, that would be... well, awful.”

Cecil smothers a giggle against Carlos’ chest. “Okay, I’ll scratch Cedric. And Caleb.”  
“Calvin too, please. And Cameron.”  
“Oh man, Cameron was never even on that list. Eesh.”

Carlos wonders if the list is an actual thing which Cecil keeps somewhere, written in forbidden pencil. It wouldn’t surprise him if it is. He kisses the top of Cecil’s head, rubs a circle around Cecil’s belly button, and as Cecil slowly drifts to sleep pressed into Carlos’ side he wonders if Cecil would let him name the baby after Nikola Tesla.

*** 

Cecil begins displaying the first signs of discomfort at nineteen weeks. Carlos knows it’s entirely possible he has, in fact, been uncomfortable for weeks, but never let on. Cecil is excellently talented at that, at denial, at smiling things away.

He’s no longer capable of doing so if that’s what he’s been doing, though. He huffs and puffs, shuffling around the house with a hand to his lower back, and sinks down onto the couch slowly.  
“You okay?” Carlos asks.

“Yes. Just sore. My back aches. My pelvis, too, which is... new. And just kind of, I don’t know, the whole thing.” He gestures around his belly, sitting curled up and frail and looking paler than Carlos would like.

Carlos scoots close, and puts a careful arm around his shoulders. “Anything I can do?”  
Cecil shakes his head. “Doctor Jarmouni did say I was going to be uncomfortable for a while. I just didn’t think... well. I’ve still got like twenty weeks left to go, and I shudder to think it might get worse.”

“Your body isn’t made for this, so everything must be...I mean. Your belly is just starting to get really obvious, so I imagine that your insides are having to make room too. But I mean, eventually things have to have shifted enough and it’ll settle down a little?” 

Okay, he’s being optimistic. Too optimistic, maybe, but he doesn’t think flat-out admitting that, yeah, Cecil was going to be achy for the next five months would be very encouraging. 

“Maybe I just need to take a nap,” Cecil suggests with a sigh.  
“Maybe you should just start taking things a little easier, in general.”

Cecil side-eyes him suspiciously, wrapping both his arms around his belly. “Are you saying I should stop working?”  
“Well. You’re going to have to go on maternity leave eventually. Paternity leave. Whatever.”

Cecil groans, that lovely heartfelt ‘ugh’ sound he makes when he gets truly exasperated. “Carlos. I sit on my ass and talk for a living. I’m pretty sure I can keep doing that. I’ll just take more naps, is all.”

“I think I’ll be more at ease if I knew you were starting to be more careful with yourself,” Carlos says gently, leaning close to nuzzle just below Cecil’s ear. “I worry.”  
“Well, don’t. I’m sore, it’s not the end of the world.” Ooh, defiant. Well, his spirit certainly seemed to be returning to him over the course of their conversation.

Carlos covers Cecil’s hand with his own and stays close, where it’s warm and where Cecil smells like passionflower shower gel. “You know, I get a little jealous of your baby bump sometimes,” he admits. Cecil raises an eyebrow at him. 

“I do! I mean, you get to... you get to have our little boy all close to you already. I still have to wait months to be able to do that. So I get jealous. But then I remember that you’re performing a really astonishing physical feat here, doing something you’re really not originally intended to do and carrying it so well, so I admit that I feel glad then that it’s not me doing it but I also feel really proud of you. You’re tough. I love you.”

Cecil rolls his eyes at him, but there’s a touch of pleasure to his face, a slight flush to his cheeks. “You’re just saying sweet stuff to cheer me up.”  
“Is it working?”  
“Yes.” 

Cecil kisses him, and that’s all quite nice. There’s tongue in the kiss, and a lot of very sharp teeth, and Cecil’s fingers thread in his hair and hold on just tightly enough for it to send little thrills down Carlos’ spine. Cecil is yearning for a distraction, and Carlos is more than willing to give it. 

“Want to go have a nap together?” he murmurs against Carlos’ mouth, and Carlos is entirely too glad to not even have the capacity to say no to that.

***

Cecil doesn’t like Nikola, nor Tesla, so that’s a shame. Carlos shoots down Joseph, Peter and Simon. 

“How about Julius? I like that,” Cecil suggests.  
“Julius? That’s. Julius.”  
“No good?”  
“Not sure. Can I let it sink in?”

Better than naming the baby after Cecil’s uncle Copernicus, anyway.

***

Carlos surprises Cecil with a picture frame, especially for the ultrasound photo. It’s nauseatingly twee, with a little duck on it, and the words ‘Baby’s First Picture’ in swirly letters, but it’s endearing and nice and Carlos can’t help himself. 

Cecil comments that perhaps a duck is not too appropriate for a baby, what with the health hazard ducks pose and all, but the frame is adorable and he takes it with him to the station. Carlos sits in his lab that evening, wondering how long it will take for Cecil to start talking about it during the broadcast. 

Exactly eleven minutes, it turns out. He goes for it right after traffic, which had mostly focused on the sickening wave of apathy running down 5th street snatching old ladies’ purses and throwing a brick through the Pinkberry’s window. 

"Listeners, to get personal for a moment, I have a picture on my desk here with me... an ultrasound, from three weeks ago. Carlos gave me a little frame for it, isn't that sweet of him? And let me tell you, our little boy is already gorgeous, even in the static darkness of the ultrasound's black-and-white. I think he has Carlos' nose. He has his hand up, like he's waving hello... a friendly Night Vale citizen-to-be, that's for sure. Oh, but for the boundaries of radio, how I wish I could show you all his little face! Though I must admit, he is already capable of causing his daddy great discomfort, too. This might be a little too much information, listeners, but I am sitting here with my buttons undone because I'm starting to grow out of my clothes and there's just no suitable maternity wear available at all for the fashion-conscious pregnant man... a tip for local businesses, perhaps?" 

The fashion-conscious pregnant man. Cecil left the house that morning in loose-fitting batik jeans and a ruffled purple shirt, brown leather sandals on his feet and his silver-gray hair sticking up beautifully at the back because he’d forgotten to brush it. Adorable and utterly Cecil, yes. Fashion-conscious, not so much.

Not that Carlos is that much of a fashionista, happily residing in his flannel and jeans most of the time, but you know. At least his wardrobe isn't quite so enchantingly retina-searing as Cecil's. 

"Oh listeners, how nice!" Cecil continues on the radio. "Old woman Josie just left a message with intern Patrick that she'd be willing to sew elastic into my pants for me. Well, dear Josie, I will certainly take you up on that kind offer!"

Carlos snorts a laugh in the direction of his little transistor radio. Cecil could only have mentioned this on purpose, knowing there was bound to be someone in Night Vale willing to step up. 

He sincerely hopes that the pants Josie would let out are not going to be the batik ones, though.

***

Carlos has a heart-to-heart with the scorpions in the bathroom. They’re going through a rebellious phase, having picked up smoking and talking amongst themselves about getting tattoos, but Carlos needs them to be on the same page as him and Cecil about the baby thing. 

He gets them to agree they won’t sting the baby, but he has to promise the baby won’t attempt to eat them. Carlos promises, then lies awake for most of the night wondering if he can keep that promise because he can’t actually say for sure the baby won’t come out craving crispy Arachnid snacks.

***

“Is this really going to help prevent stretch marks?” Cecil says, sitting back on their bed, a nest of pillows fluffed up behind his back. He is freshly showered, a little pink, and wearing only his pajama pants. The elastic waistband is pushed down under his belly and Carlos is rubbing lotion on it in soothing, loving circles. 

“Yes,” Carlos says. “Helps keep your skin supple.” Also helpfully provides Carlos with an excuse to fondle Cecil, which is good. Not that he necessarily needs an excuse, but he likes having them. 

Cecil hums, relaxes into his pillows with his eyes closed, and dozes contentedly. He’s been tired lately, which gives Carlos all the more reason to pamper him. He leans close, kisses Cecil’s belly right above his belly button. His skin smells inoffensive, like lotion and soap, and he quietly starts reciting to it. 

“Hydrogen, helium lithium…” His hands rub little circles and he fancies his voice carries tremors of love and knowledge through Cecil’s skin right to their baby’s ears.  
“What are you doing?”

“Reciting the periodic table. Sodium, magnesium...” He keeps his voice even, mellow, and finds himself drifting from the moment a little. He used to recite the periodic table when he was nervous. It always calmed him for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on. 

Cecil is quiet, listening to him as he recites the elements one by one, staring up unseeing without his glasses at the ceiling. There’s a frown on his face and a question forming between his teeth.

“You’re reciting the periodic table hoping he’ll come out a pre-made scientist?”  
Yes, in a nutshell. “You never know. They say playing music to the fetus helps form an appreciation for it, so I thought this could... well, it won’t hurt.”  
“You really know the entire thing by heart?”  
“Of course I do.”

Cecil laughs, his belly shaking lightly under Carlos’ lips. Carlos grins against his skin, and continues.

“Nobelium, lawrencium...”  
“Oh come on, you just made that up. Lawrencium?” Cecil interrupts him.  
“What? Did not. Lawrencium is a radioactive synthetic chemical element. An actinide.”  
“Of course it is.”

Cecil is grinning at him, a mouth too full of teeth that could probably bite through bone, and Carlos wishes Cecil was ticklish because he would’ve had him squirming around the bed by now. As it is, he makes do with sitting up and kissing that mouth with those teeth in it until Cecil is out of breath and giggling across his lips and Carlos continues his periodic table, not to Cecil’s belly but against Cecil’s perfect smile.

***

“Michael.”  
“Seriously, Carlos? Michael?”  
“What’s wrong with Michael?”  
“Nothing. Everything. I vote no to Michael.”  
“Alright, fine.”

***

“Carlos! Carlos, wake up!”

It’s dark, meaning it’s very early, and Carlos finds himself stuck between sleepy annoyance and a vague panic people only feel when being abruptly pulled from their REM sleep. 

“Whuh?” he manages, turning to Cecil, who is wide awake. His eyes, full moons like the one perched outside in the Night Vale sky, bathe nearly the entire room in an eerie glow.

“He’s kicking! The baby’s kicking!”  
“What?” 

Cecil grabs his hand and yanks it over, places it on the gentle swell of his abdomen, and waits. It takes all but two seconds and there it is – a push from inside Cecil’s belly, up against Carlos’ hand. Cecil’s laugh cuts clear through the dark and Carlos has never woken up this quickly in his life.

“Oh my God,” he says in a hushed breath, sitting up and placing his other hand on Cecil’s abdomen too.

Again the baby kicks, or pushes, or does whatever he’s doing that Carlos can feel. He fancies he might even be head-butting him, ever so persistently. He’s alive, he’s moving against his hand, and Cecil is laughing and Carlos is in such utter awe all he can do is stare wide-eyed. 

“I’ve felt him move before, but never this clearly! He’s letting us know he’s here, Carlos!” Cecil babbles, but Carlos just feels as the baby keeps on moving for at least another five minutes. Carlos wishes for an ultrasound machine, X-ray eyes, anything that would tell him what exactly it was the baby was doing, but settles for the utterly real sensation of touch. 

He quiets again, settled in the warm, safe haven Cecil’s body has so miraculously created for him. Carlos waits just a little longer, then, satisfied the baby has probably drifted off to sleep, removes his hands and sits back.

“Whoa. That was. Whoa. Can I say magical? Is that okay?”  
“I think you’re allowed to say magical. I won’t tell anyone that mister scientist used that term, okay?”  
He can see Cecil wink in the dark, as one of the glowing moons momentarily disappears. That’s pretty magical too, actually, but Carlos best not admit that. The university might burst in through the window and take his PhD off of him. 

“I need to pee,” Cecil says lovingly. “Whatever it is he was doing, he was doing it on top of my bladder.”  
He scoots out the bed, pads to the bathroom through a dark house lit only by the light of his own eyes. Carlos flops forward, face-first into his pillow, and starts to giggle. His life is nuts, utterly nuts, but he doesn’t think anyone in the world is happier than he is right now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not a scientist. Don't throw things at me for Carlos' weird theory as to how baby J. came to be.

Cecil starts craving dairy. It's fairly innocuous at first, glasses of milk, cups of yoghurt, but at one point Carlos finds him eating ricotta cheese at three AM, looking wide-eyed and vaguely manic, and Carlos wonders if he should worry. On the up side it's a healthier craving than, say, chocolate or French fries, but Cecil appears more than capable of wolfing down vast quantities of those, too. 

Carlos buys him large amounts of milk, cheese, and more pudding than anyone has ever needed in their lives. He reads labels, wonders why the cheese ‘might contain trace amounts of nuts and/or dimension-transcending particles’, and thinks maybe he ought to buy more organic stuff.

He’s not sure whether organic stuff produced in Night Vale would not contain trace amounts of nuts and/or dimension-transcending particles, but at least there should be less additives in it.

Night Vale doesn’t have a lot of places where a well-intending scientist might buy organic food, especially since Carlos no longer trusts goods from the Green Market after his little broccoli incident. There’s always John Peters, though. While famed for his imaginary corn, and often preoccupied with his ill-fated peaches, the man does have other things going on at his farm.

These things include a couple of optimistic cows, and a handful of goats that seem to be constantly plotting to overthrow the patriarchy. Even now, as Carlos walks up the path to the converted shed from where John Peters sells his produce, they eye him warily and pound the ground with their cloven hooves. 

“Carlos the scientist! How can I help you today?” John Peters says, standing in dark green overalls and wiping his hands on a cotton dishrag.  
“I was hoping to buy some milk. For Cecil? He’s been on a dairy kick.”  
“Oh, has he? Well, that’s nice.” 

John retrieves a pair of glass bottles, fresh milk within. Carlos is briefly enamored with that, with farm-fresh milk in old-fashioned glass bottles, that little all-American idyll, until John coughs and an honest-to-God wasp flies out from between his lips. Carlos stares, and completely loses his train of thought.

John places the bottles on the counter, a handcrafted thing of wood painted a lush shade of blue, and coughs again. Another wasp crawls leisurely from between his lips and perches on his chin.

“Excuse my cough,” John says. “How far along is Cecil now, anyway?”  
“Uh. About thirty weeks. “ Carlos eyes him warily as the wasp moves up, around the corner of his mouth, and crawls into John’s nose. John either doesn’t notice, or has it happen often enough for him not to care, as he doesn’t react to it in the slightest.

Carlos would expect a guy to at least twitch a little bit when a wasp climbs up his nostril, is all.

“Must be getting big then!” John chortles.  
“The size of a house. A beautiful house, though.” Carlos puts a handful of dollar bills on the counter, not even bothering to check how much. John coughs again and two wasps fly happily up into the midsummer air.

“Bet he is. Bet you two are counting the days. Did you figure out how he got knocked up yet? He mentioned on the radio you were busy with that.” John counts the bills, puts a few back on the counter and folds the rest up to tuck into the breast pocket of his overalls. 

“I’m working on a theory revolving around a kind of osmosis,” Carlos says, not taking his eyes off the wasps, one of them now crawling around John’s short-cropped hair. “Cecil’s body absorbed my genetic material and merged it with his in a non-traditional variation of cell fertilization, creating a zygote which started dividing its cells to become a fetus. Cecil’s body then formed a gestational sac around it to nourish and protect it, though I haven’t managed to explain that reaction yet.”

John raises an eyebrow at him. “So Cecil absorbed your semen for his body to make a baby with.”  
“Well. Not consciously. His body sort of acted on its own... and it’s a valid theory, thank you.” 

Did a guy who’s currently coughing up wasps just criticize his hypothesis? That’s just not acceptable.

“I have a cousin who gave birth. He was abducted. You sure that’s not what happened to Cecil?” John asks.  
“Abducted?”

“Yeah. These three men in black suits came and pulled him right out of his garbage truck. Came back six months later, no memory of where he’d been, and all pregnant with triplets. One of them has eight eyes, like a spider. Bright little thing, won the Night Vale spelling bee last April!”

“That’s... nice. But no, Cecil wasn’t abducted. Just knocked up in about the most old-fashioned way a man can get knocked up by, uh, another man.” He smiles awkwardly, stuffing his change into the back pocket of his jeans. 

“Well. Send Cecil my regards. And here, on the house.” He takes what Carlos assumes to be a block of cheese, wrapped in clean white paper, and puts it in Carlos’ hand. “Goat cheese, homemade. Full of all sorts of healthy stuff for Cecil and the baby. I recommend grilling it, it melts up real nice.”

Carlos thanks him, John Peters smiles and sends a new handful of wasps out into the universe, and Carlos all but runs back to his car and backs out of John’s property so quickly he sends clods of dirt flying out from underneath the wheels of his car.

Cecil is all smiles when he comes home. “You got me fresh milk? That’s really sweet.”  
"I picked it up from John Peters. You know, the farmer. He gave you this too."

He tosses Cecil the block of cheese, who catches it and sniffs it appreciatively. “That’s nice of him. How is John?”  
"He was having a wasp thing. Situation. A wasp situation. He was coughing them up?"  
"Really? Oh, poor John. Vespid colds are the worst."

Carlos makes a mental note of that one. Vespid colds. Going right on the to-do list, below figuring out just what the hell throat spiders are.

“Want me to make you something yummy with that?” he says, gesturing at the block of cheese Cecil is now protectively cradling against his chest.  
“Would you?”  
“Sure.” 

Cecil grins, and tosses the block of cheese back. Carlos misses it, and it falls with a dull thud onto their laminate flooring. Cecil starts laughing hysterically, while Carlos retrieves the cheese and supposes it’ll be okay to eat still, what with it being wrapped in paper and all.

***

“Your son has the hiccups.”  
“Does he now?”  
“Feels like something’s flicking against my insides. It’s really weird.”

Carlos covers Cecil’s belly with his hands. He has to splay his fingers out as far as he can now to cover it entirely, and even then only just about manages anymore. He feels it, the hiccups, little tremors a few seconds apart. 

“Happens about twice a day, I think.”  
“My grandmother used to say that when you had the hiccups it meant your heart was growing,” Carlos says, and Cecil chuckles.  
“And you believed it?”

“I did when I was six.”  
“It’s a cute image. Our baby hiccupping so his little heart can grow. I think I’ll keep it.”

“Want to brainstorm some more names?”  
“I’m still stuck on Julius.”  
“Alright. But there’s also... Brennan.”

“Brennan?”  
“Or Steven?”  
“If you think I’m going to give my baby the same name as _Steve Carlsberg_ , you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Right. Sorry. Um, how about Kevin?”

Cecil looks equal parts horrified and offended, and Carlos thinks it better not to ask.

***

Doctor Jarmouni schedules their C-section for early November. Cecil draws a great big black heart on their calendar, and checks it twice a day to make sure the date hasn’t moved or gotten erased from the world’s collective future. Carlos quietly counts the days and the nights and hopes time doesn’t slow down too much while he waits.

***

Cecil goes from walking to waddling. Carlos would find it endearing, except he knows the waddle is mostly caused by pelvic pains, and that just takes the cute right out of it.

Cecil also starts to get trouble sleeping, which is perhaps even more disconcerting. Carlos wakes up one chilly desert night and finds Cecil’s side of the bed empty, his pillow cold. He gets up, wraps the sheets around his shoulders and pads into the living room where he finds Cecil, on their sofa, sitting red-faced and focused.

He’s knitting. Carlos can’t quite see what, but it’s orange, and tangled, and Cecil isn’t looking too happy.

“Who taught you to knit?” he asks him gently as he sits down next to him, crossing his legs and wrapping himself in his sheet.  
“The internet, and it didn’t do it very well,” Cecil grumbles. “I wanted to knit booties, but that was much more complex than I thought it would be. So now I’m trying a blanket, but I keep on winding up with less stitches than I started out with.”

“C’mere.” He carefully takes the knitting out of Cecil’s hands. Barely an inch so far, and a mess of dropped stitches. He doesn’t remember much of this, but his hands pick up faster than his sleep-addled brain does and he starts pulling the stitches back up onto the needle.

“You know how to knit?”  
“Not really. Just some basics. I have six elderly aunts on my mother’s side.” 

Cecil watches him work, rubbing an absent circle on his belly. Thirty three weeks now, and he has bags under his eyes Carlos could smuggle wheat and wheat by-products in.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he asks.  
“It’s all busy in here,” Cecil says with a sigh. “He’s being all kicky and spinny, and I keep getting these aches and cramps... I just couldn’t get comfortable so I gave up and figured I’d sit here for a little while. Before I woke you up with my tossing and turning.”

“You woke me up with your absence.”  
“I’m sorry.”

Carlos smiles, and hands the knitting needles back to Cecil. “There. I salvaged the stitches you dropped... try not to let any fall off the needles, okay.”  
Cecil takes it from him, sighs, stares at the lumpy mass of knitting. “I probably shouldn’t do this late at night anyway. I thought it might be soothing, but all it makes me want to do is stab things.”

“Had the same effect on my six elderly aunts,” Carlos says with a laugh, wrapping his sheets closer around himself.  
“Maybe I should just try to get some sleep. Little boy’s quieted down, anyway. A few hours of sleep would be nice.” He puts the knitting on their coffee table with some effort. 

“You need a hoist?” Carlos asks as he stands up, holding a hand out to Cecil.  
“Yes please.” Cecil takes his hand and Carlos helps him up. He takes his chance and cuddles Cecil as they stand, his round belly pressed tight against Carlos, and Cecil sighs into his neck. Then Carlos lets go, and together they make it back to their bedroom.

Cecil manages about two hours of sleep before muscle spasms in his back wake him up again. He’s cranky, until Carlos makes him a hearty breakfast of eggs parmesan and together they watch the sun come up over Night Vale roofs.

***

Cecil is thirty six weeks pregnant and still working. Carlos tried civil discussions. He tried reasoning. He tried full-on arguing, but as it turns out any argument started with a pregnant man in his third trimester is lost before it’s even begun. Cecil works, no longer full days, just afternoons and early evenings to do his broadcast, and Carlos finds peace in knowing that literally the whole town is now looking out for them.

Cecil is still giving them colorful updates about his pregnancy, after all. Nobody’s even appeared to protest about the amount of airtime he’s devoting to describing the baby’s kicks, waxing rhapsodic about their latest ultrasound, or philosophizing about what ‘future’ means when you’re genuinely aiding the continued existence of your species. 

So it’s around four, and Cecil is at work, and so is Carlos, stuck in his lab doing a thorough chemical analysis of a tissue sample he’s taken from a dead, foot-long cicada he’d found behind the high school. It’s not even a species of cicada commonly found in Arizona, and what bothers him most is that he can’t figure out why it’s dead.

His phone buzzes, but it doesn’t register. He hears it, but it doesn’t necessarily click that it might be urgent. He doesn’t purposely ignore it, but he doesn’t pick it up either. 

The numbers he’s getting on the tissue sample make no sense. They’re virtually telling him the thing’s a mammal, which it’s clearly not.

His phone goes off again, buzzing angrily across the aluminum workbench on the other side of his lab. Carlos adjusts his microscope and grumbles under his breath.

It takes all but ten minutes for his front door to open violently, and for someone to come pounding up the stairs so loudly they sound like an entire herd of elephants crashing through the building. Carlos startles so badly he drops his specimen, and the chemicals he’d put in it cause it to burn a neat circle onto the clean tile floor.

“Answer your phone already!” the young man who bursts into his lab yells. 

It takes Carlos a moment to recognize him as one of the Night Vale Radio interns, one whose name Carlos keeps forgetting. He’d been perfectly average-looking until about a week ago, when Cecil sent him to report on the new turtle pond the city council had installed in Mission Grove Park and the kid had come back covered in green scales. 

The scales seemed to be falling off now, though, revealing pink new skin underneath.

“You need to come quickly! Cecil’s in labor!” he shouts at the top of his lungs. Carlos winces and wonders briefly if he couldn’t have gotten that across at a friendlier volume.

“Cecil can’t be in labor, the C-section’s not scheduled for another four weeks,” he says.  
“Then your kid’s got a mind of its own, because it’s coming now.” The kid is panting, red-faced under his scales, sweating at the temples. He’s not a very athletic boy, and while the station is not far from Cecil’s lab it’s quite a way to run at break-neck speed.

“But Cecil can’t give birth?” Carlos asks. He’s having trouble catching up with the situation.  
“Hence the problem! Are we really going to stand here and debate this?” The intern waves his hands, panicked, and a switch flips in Carlos’ mind.

Not the time for rational thought. Time to go with it. He grabs his car keys, his phone, and manages to grab the kid by the collar as well while he’s at it. “Where is he?”

“The station oracle, Lola, she drove him to the hospital. He was in a lot of pain. I’m – he’s – we’re. Kind of scared.” He manages to get the sentence out while Carlos all but carries him down the stairs and out the door, flings the kid into his car and gets behind the wheel. He’s not sure why he’s bringing the intern. He’s not sure whether he’s locked the door, and whether he should have maybe cleaned up the specimen he dropped before it does something questionable.

He’s sure, however, that none of it matters. He floors the gas pedal, ignores the intern’s shriek of panic, and drives faster than he’d ever thought his sensible hybrid Coupe could manage. 

Night Vale General Hospital is not large, and Carlos hears Cecil long before he runs onto the Maternity ward. 

He’s screaming. It’s not a good sound. It makes every muscle in Carlos’ body tense up, his stomach turn, makes his eyes burn. He follows the sound, pushing aside a few nurses he’s fairly certain did nothing to deserve such treatment, and finds Cecil in an examination room, writhing on a gurney while yet more nurses try to get him into a surgery gown.

“Carlos!” he cries out. “I’m having, something’s wrong, it hurts so much!” He’s babbling, and pale, and his eyes are large and round. They managed to attach a heart monitor to him that’s beeping far too incessantly.  
“We’re getting things ready for an emergency C-section, sir,” one of the nurses says, but Carlos pays her no mind.

Cecil is looking at him, clinging to his hand so tightly Carlos can feel the bones in his palm shift, and he is so very scared that Carlos doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s never seen Cecil actually _scared_ before. Worried, yes. Apprehensive. Unsettled. But this, this is _fear_ , the kind that comes with cold sweat and harried breathing . 

The beeping speeds up and Cecil’s mouth opens in quiet agony, and Carlos realizes he’s having _contractions_. But what purpose would contractions have for a person physically incapable of pushing the baby out? The source of Cecil’s pain becomes clear, like a sharp-edged crystal ready to slice open a few innocent fingers, and Carlos finds himself yelling for a doctor, an anesthesiologist, anyone at all. 

Cecil cries the helpless cry of a man whose body is betraying him, curling up with pain, and when Doctor Jarmouni steps into the room Carlos practically pounces him.

“Something’s wrong, you have to help him, this isn’t supposed to happen,” he raves, and the doctor attempts to calm him with hand gestures that do very little but make Carlos feel rather irrationally angry.

“We’re preparing an operating room as we speak. We’re going to have to forego on our schedule and bring your baby out now, sir,” he says, as calmly as if he’s done nothing in his entire life but seen grown men go through vast amounts of unexpected pain. Actually, Carlos thinks, he probably _has_. 

“It’s too soon! I’m not done, he’s not done growing yet!” Cecil protests, but the doctor smiles that smile he does, the stupidly belittling one that Carlos wants to punch right off his face.  
“Plenty of babies are ready to be born at thirty six weeks, Cecil. We don’t all need a neat forty weeks to develop fully. Don’t you worry, it’ll be fine.”

It’s not fine. Cecil is in distress, meaning the baby is in distress, and it’s all very far from fine. The doctor may not be betraying much, but the nurses are exchanging looks and Carlos has no idea how to interpret them. Cecil doesn’t notice, though, for which Carlos is more grateful than he can voice. 

Cecil is prepped for surgery. Carlos is wrapped in dark blue medical scrubs, latex gloves, and a face mask. He hadn’t expected to be allowed into the operating room, not during an emergency C-section, but they usher him in right alongside Cecil and he’s not about to bring up that that’s probably not how it’s done in most other hospitals. 

Cecil lies on the table, pale, trembling, the first wave of anesthetics taking the sharper edges off his pain, and eyes Carlos nervously.  
“Carlos,” he says. “Carlos. Watch over the baby, okay?”  
“We’re gonna watch over him together. See you on the flip side, alright?” 

He presses an awkward kiss to Cecil’s forehead, face mask still on, and watches as the anesthesiologist swiftly puts Cecil under. He’s gone quickly, breathing steadily, and the team wastes little to no time to get going. 

To the steady beat of Cecil’s heart monitor Doctor Jarmouni asks for instruments, gives clipped orders to his surgical team, and Carlos watches wide-eyed as they make a small incision on Cecil’s abdomen. Iodine and blood mix neatly across Cecil’s skin, and Carlos thanks his lucky stars that he’s not the type to get queasy. 

Time stretches. He’d expect it to speed up, but it feels like hours before the doctor’s capable hands pull a small shape out of the opening in Cecil’s belly. Can’t have been more than ten minutes, but time slows and drips and Carlos can’t hear the beep of Cecil’s monitor over the earsplitting thump of his own heart.

Their son is small, and covered in the amniotic sac he’d lived in inside of Cecil’s abdomen. The doctor removes it easily, snips the umbilical cord, turns the baby over in his hands.

And the room goes silent. 

It stays silent, the only sound the ever-steady beep that is Cecil’s heart. Their little boy lies ashen and still in the doctor’s hands, and the only person in the room breathing is Cecil - knocked-out, blissfully unaware Cecil.

A deep, primal groan rolls through the room, and Carlos realizes it came from him. He steps forward, away from where he’d stood by Cecil’s head, but is stopped cold by a nurse who slams her hand square into his chest to keep him back. She leaves a perfect handprint of Cecil’s blood over his heart, but Carlos doesn’t care.

While his surgical staff starts to neatly and without comment close Cecil back up, doctor Jarmouni has taken their baby aside. He’s cleaning out his nose and mouth with a little instrument Carlos knows he should be able to name but cannot, all the while gently muttering to the baby in a language Carlos thinks might be Arabic. 

He carefully shakes the baby, pats his chest, picks him up again, and once more Carlos groans and wonders how he’ll ever find the words to tell this to Cecil once he wakes up.

That’s when the silence in the room shatters, breaks, is torn to pieces by the smallest sound Carlos has ever heard.

Their son inhales, squeaks, his little lungs rattle, and he begins to cry. It’s weak, but it’s there, and he’s breathing.

The doctor laughs. Carlos laughs, for lack of a better response, and listens as his child demands his life more loudly with each rightfully taken breath.

***

Carlos doesn’t leave his son’s side after that. He watches the nurses clean him, weigh him, test his reflexes, and perform a ritual of sorts involving some chants and a bloodstone balanced precariously on his little forehead. “For protection, of course,” ones of the nurses says fondly as she wraps him in a soft blanket afterwards. 

He is, for all intents and purposes, perfect. Small and inexplicable, but perfect, and he now lies dozing in a plastic bassinet at the foot of Cecil’s bed. Exhausting business, this being born, and Carlos just stands and watches and marvels. 

Cecil stirs. He awakes slowly, safe and warm in his hospital bed, and Carlos watches as he blinks his eyes open and frowns at the ceiling for a brief moment of confusion. Then, on instinct, his hands fly to his empty abdomen and Carlos can virtually see the panic that descends onto him.

“Cecil,” Carlos says softly, stepping close and leaning close. He runs a hand through Cecil’s hair, making soft soothing noises. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re in the hospital, remember?”  
Cecil licks his dry lips, opens and closes his mouth, tries to find his voice. “I don’t – Carlos – the baby?” he croaks. He’s hazy still, the drugs still very present in his system. Carlos presses a kiss to his forehead.

“The baby’s fine. You’re both fine. Everything went well.”  
It didn’t, but Cecil doesn’t need to know that right now. It’s not important at this very moment, when Cecil’s presence in the room is still so very frail and their son is healthy and safe.

“Yes,” Cecil says. He licks his lips again, frowning at the ceiling. “Yes. Carlos. I was so worried. Everything went so quickly.”  
“Tell me about it. But you have nothing to worry about now. Everything is fine.” 

“Where’s the baby?” Cecil’s voice is small and unsure, and that’s something Carlos never thought Cecil’s voice would be capable of being. He smiles at him.

“He’s right here. Want to meet our son?”  
“Yes!” 

Carlos carefully lifts their baby out of his bassinet. The boy barely even stirs, and Carlos thinks he’s already getting the hang of handling something so little. Cecil struggles and tries to sit up.

“No no, you stay down, we’ll come to you,” Carlos says. He gently places their son on Cecil’s chest, all five pounds and one ounce of him, and watches as Cecil lays eyes on his child for the first time.

He goes all quiet with it, which is unusual and endearing. He wraps careful arms around the baby, smells him, presses his lips to his little head.

“He has your hair,” Cecil says softly, and Carlos laughs.  
“Yes, he does, and lots of it too.”  
“Is he really okay? He was, he is, earlier than he should be, and –“

“He’s fine, Cecil. On the small side, but he’s doing well. The doctor wants to keep you and him here for a day or so, just in case, but if the two of you keep performing as you’ve done so far I get to take you both home the day after tomorrow.”

Carlos leans onto the bed, close to Cecil, and drinks in the moment. It’s a special one, after all. Cecil is getting to know their son, touching his shock of dark hair, caressing his round cheeks, pressing his finger into a tiny hand that closes tightly around it. The baby’s eyes open slowly, dark and still unseeing, and close again. 

He is content. Carlos wonders if he knows that the people with him are his parents. Would he recognize the beat of Cecil’s heart as the one he heard in utero? Would their voices be at all familiar? He seems happy enough, at least, cradled in his father’s arms.

“Did you name him yet?” Cecil asks.  
“No. Of course not. I wasn’t about to name him while you were still out cold.” Carlos presses a kiss into Cecil’s hair.

“We hadn’t even really decided on a name yet. We weren’t quite prepared for you, little man,” Cecil says, his voice a soft, deep rumble. He presses another kiss to the baby’s head.  
“I don’t know, I’ve grown kind of fond of Julius,” Carlos says.

Cecil smiles. “Yeah? Julius. I like it. Do you like it, little man?” 

The baby has dozed off once more. Carlos watches him, and watches Cecil, and feels uniquely at peace with life.

“Let’s go with Julius, yeah?”  
“Yes.”

They both smile, and Julius finds his rightful place in an unlikely but not impossible universe. 

***

Julius comes home. The whole thing doesn’t require as much adjusting as Carlos had expected, and he concludes they’d been prepared better than he’d thought they were. Julius gains some weight, loses some weight, their brand-new pediatrician reassures them that this is perfectly normal, and Julius goes on to perform exactly as you’d expect a newborn to do.

Cecil stays off his feet for a few weeks. It’s not an easy thing for him, not when he has a brand new little boy he’s desperate to dote on and show off, but his own body keeps on reigning him back in. He keeps Julius with him at nearly all times, rarely not in the same room as him, and can go intensely and deeply uncharacteristically quiet watching him sleep. 

Carlos gets to watch him fall in love with his child, a little more every day, and lives an existence of night feedings and diaper changes. He becomes able to make a perfect bottle of formula without even having to measure anything anymore, and sometimes sits and observes Cecil and Julius together without letting them know he’s there.

When Cecil starts weaving elaborate speeches about the creases around Julius’ deep dark eyes when he yawns, or the exact resonance of his little cries, Carlos knows it’s getting to be time for him to go back to work. He misses the station. He misses talking to his listeners, and Carlos knows he’s desperate to tell them everything there is to know about Julius.

As such, Julius is a little over eight weeks old when Cecil goes back to work. Just his evening broadcasts at first, just a few hours every day, but Carlos has to admit he enjoys the opportunity to now regularly spend some time alone with Julius. 

Tonight, though, Julius is fussy. Carlos can’t put his finger on why, as he’s been fed, changed, bathed, and cuddled extensively, but he remains unhappy. Tired, most likely, but not yet willing to give into sleep. 

Carlos walks him back and forth their living room, rocking him, and Julius whines pitifully. He’s not crying, not really, but doesn’t want to be put down and Carlos has to admit, bad parenting though it might be, he’s fine holding him close for now.

This is papá-and-Julius time, after all. If Julius wants to be coddled, coddle him Carlos shall. So he walks, making soothing sounds, his lips pressed lightly against Julius’ head. He smells like baby lotion, his hair soft and already wild, and makes tiny discontent noises like a simmering little coffee pot. 

“You want to listen to daddy? Let’s listen to daddy,” Carlos hums, and he flicks the radio on. Static, a crackle, and Cecil’s deep voice glides across the airwaves into their living room.

“The moon rises over the barren land, another empty desert day dwindles to an end. We laugh until we cry, and everything is terrifying and beautiful. Welcome to Night Vale.”

Julius stirs, quiets down, his eyes large and fascinated as he settles at the familiar tone of his father’s words. He stuffs his little fist into his mouth and begins to suckle, listening attentively, his discontent melting away. Carlos loves him, and he loves Cecil, and is all endorphins and butterflies. 

He rocks Julius gently, shifting his balance from foot to foot in an ancient dance of fatherhood and care to the melodious and slightly hypnotic rhythm of Cecil’s broadcast. Together, they listen to the Voice of Night Vale, and wait for him to come home to his family.


	5. Epilogue

It’s dark, meaning it’s very early, and Carlos is woken up by a shift, a dip in the mattress, little hands and little feet quickly making their way up the bed. Julius is not a quiet boy, subtlety never his forte, and he wriggles in between Carlos and Cecil in a way he probably thinks is incredibly sneaky but which really, really isn’t.

“Julius,” Carlos says softly, a gentle scold in his tone. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”  
“No, what time is it?” Julius whispers back.

“No idea, I was hoping you knew,” Carlos answers, rolling onto his side. Julius can actually tell time now. They spent a lot of time on that, the two of them, learning the hands of the clock. Carlos doesn’t know why it was so important to him that Julius learned this, considering how time in Night Vale was ever a relative sort of thing, but he just so desperately wanted him to learn it.

Julius lies quietly between the two of them now, probably no real reason existing for him to creep out of his own bed and into theirs. He woke up early. He felt lonely. This happens on occasion. Carlos knows that he should tell him to go back to his own bed, but his sixth birthday comes closer every day and Carlos also knows that as time goes by these sorts of things are bound to happen less and less.

Best enjoy it while he can, these quiet moments, with Julius in his soft cotton Hello Kitty pajamas and his curly black hair an inkblot between their pillows. He was starting to lose his baby teeth now too, two of them already sitting in a little wooden box Cecil had purchased just for the occasion. Whenever Julius was being mischievous, whenever he was in any kind of emotional upheaval, his mouth now boasted two sharp teeth. Carlos’ little shark-to-be, really, just like his daddy. 

Also just like his daddy, in Julius’ eyes the first quarter moon shines that night. Carlos figured that one out when Julius was only about six months old, and he had gone to check on him in the deep of the night. His nursery bathed in the eerie glow of the full moon in Julius' large, dark eyes, just as it did outside his window, and Carlos felt like some kind of wish had been granted.

“Papá?” Julius asks, a casual question that sounded like he’d been thinking on it for some time. “What’s the moon made of?”  
“Rock. Mostly.”

“Space rock.”  
“Yes. And lava. The moon has a molten core, just like the Earth.”

“What about the moon in daddy’s eyes?”  
Now there was a good question. That one, Carlos didn’t have a ready-made answer for. Julius is looking at him expectantly, and on his other side Cecil is now feigning sleep, a smile he can’t manage to suppress appearing on his lips. 

“Well,” Carlos said, grinning as he eyed Cecil. “That’s a more difficult question to answer. We can’t exactly send a little astronaut there in a tiny little rocket, after all.”  
Julius giggles, and so does Cecil. He turns on his side to wrap an arm around Julius and press a kiss into his hair. “What are you doing up, little man?”

“I woke up thinking about the moon,” is Julius’ perfectly sensible explanation. “The way it’s just sitting up there, being all rock and shining. I didn’t understand it so I couldn’t fall back to sleep.”

And there it is, Cecil’s unmistakable blood flowing in Julius’ veins. Carlos chuckles, reaching across Julius to Cecil, and the three of them lie quietly. Cecil drifts back to sleep first, as easily as he’d always done. Carlos is second, his nose pressed into Julius’ hair, his hand resting on Cecil’s hip.

Julius lies awake, listening to his parents’ breathing, and wonders where the moon in their eyes goes when the sun comes up. He doesn’t think his fathers know the answer to that either. He does know, however, in the depths of his little heart, that it always comes back when the stars come out.


End file.
